


the weight of dreams

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Darkspawn Chronicles DLC, F/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 13:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Alistair has a terrible nightmare, one his fellow Warden does not share.





	the weight of dreams

Alistair tasted blood and sweat and ashes. **  
**

He staggered, the foul dragon’s roars deafening him.  His chest seared.  The Archdemon’s rage pulsed in his head, a crushing blow that nearly brought him to his knees.  But he could not stop.  Denerim burned below him, the kingdom he never wanted but swore to save, and the screams of its people made him weep even as he fought.  He fought for all of them, the fool nobles and the great ones, the common folk, the Chantry sisters, even Goldanna and her children – he fought for all of them.

Darkspawn blood boiled out of corpses underfoot, eating away at the sandstone.  Alistair slogged through them, flagging.  An emissary crowed, hitting him with a wallop of magic that took his breath away.  He pushed past the weakness, thrashing the head of a genlock with his shield until it sank to the ground with a broken neck.  He let out a roar to match the Archdemon’s, and ran for the great beast’s legs.

_Bleed it_ , his mind begged,  _weaken it, kill it, stop this, stop the **Blight**_ –

He stopped for a second, horrified, at the flash of red hair on the ground, the curled shape of a Mabari beside her.  

_Leliana_ , he choked.   _Barkspawn!_   But they did not rise, even with the haze of Morrigan’s magics still hanging over the field, and he swore, thrusting his blade into a Hurlock’s chest.  The creature writhed until Alistair ripped the blade out and bashed the foul monster to the ground with a rush of his shield.  He continued.  What choice did he have?

A sharp cry, a woman’s, piercing above the darkspawn grunts.  He whirled to his side to see Morrigan surrounded, flashes of magic sparking around her, and yet there were too many of them –

The sound of her staff shattering drove him onward.

The stench of the Archdemon was even worse than the reek of battle and blood, but Alistair didn’t care.  He tore and hacked at the great beast, its will bearing down on him, its wings battering him, its great tail threatening to smash him.  He danced around it with a mad new strength, nearly a berserker Warden King, and he raised his sword to strike, to sever, to kill –

He was on the ground.  There was darkness at the edge of him, pouring in like water into a sinking ship, and he flailed against it desperately, his head throbbing, his chest burning, his eyes blurring.  He flailed and reached and tried, Maker, how he tried, Maker, how he  _tries_  –

And then there was only the exquisite pain of an iron boot driven into the back of his skull, and as the bone split, as it splintered, as the blood ran into his mouth thick and hot, he finally felt relieved.

* * *

“Ungh!” Alistair gasps, jerking upright.  He shivers violently, wild-eyed, panting.

Beside him Tasryn is awake, alert, all summoned mana and coiled reflexes.  Flame sprouts on the edges of her fingers, enough to illuminate the creaky inn bed, and she assesses the threat.  The flame gutters down, returning the room to darkness once again.  Only a sliver of moonlight through the window remains.

“A nightmare,” she says quietly, touching his back.  She lets a trickle of restorative magic suffuse the tense muscles beneath her fingertips, just enough so that he slumps back against the lumpy stuffed mattress.  She curls up beside him.

“Was it that obvious,” he tries to deadpan, but she can hear he’s shaken.

“What was it?” Tasryn murmurs.  “Was it the Archdemon again?  I didn’t see anything, but I had only just fallen asleep.”

He brushes her cheek with a trembling hand.  “Sort of.  It wasn’t a Warden dream, at any rate.”  His breathing is still rapid, but it is improving.  Slightly.  

“You can talk to me, Alistair, if you’d like.”

“I know,” says Alistair.  She can just make out the shape of his nose in the dim light.  He’s staring at the ceiling as if it holds answers.

She waits.  She can hear the pause in between each breath, the heft of whatever it is he’s afraid to tell her.  It seems strange to think there was a time she did not possess this knowledge.

Outside, she can hear simple sounds – night-sounds of others shifting in their rooms, floorboards creaking and doors opening.  It was always this way in the Tower, too; that sense of others moving; one was never truly alone.  

Tasryn takes his hand, folding his much larger fingers against her palm.  She has never been not-alone like this, though, the way she is with Alistair.

She waits.  She can be patient, sometimes, when it suits her.

“Ought I,” Alistair begins.  Another pause.  She can hear the sound of his mouth moving against itself, tongue tapping against teeth, the sounds of pre-speech.  She hopes whatever he is trying to say does not hurt either of them.  She braces.

“Ought I,” he tries again, “to be King, Tasryn?”

She squeezes his hand hard, hard as she can.  He squeezes back.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly.  “You care, Alistair.  You would always put your people first.  You’d take care of them.”

“But who’s to say that’s enough?” he asks.  He scrubs at his face with his other hand, the motion making their shoddy bed creak again.  “The Blight doesn’t care if you’re a good person or if you want to help others.  We both know that.”

“What did you dream?”

The question shimmers in the night air, breathy, gossamer… and somehow sharp.

“I was the Warden King,” says Alistair, the words halting.  “King of Ferelden, and its last Warden.  You’d – you’d never been, Tasryn.  Or you were lost at Ostagar.”  He kisses her, hard and clumsy in the dark.  “And it was up to me.  All of it.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw  _failure_ , of course.”  He shifts over, turns onto his side.  She can no longer see his nose, its bridge highlighted by a glimmer of moonlight.  She can see only the hint of the back of his head, his hair mussed by the pillow and sticking up at odd angles.  “The Archdemon won.  The city – the entire country – was destroyed.  And King Alistair, last of the Theirin line, had his head stoved in by a darkspawn’s iron boot.”

“Alistair – “ she begins, trying to turn him back to face her.

“I can’t rule them, Tasryn.  Not only would I be rubbish at it, but… how can I do what needs to be done against the Archdemon, if I’ve got a kingdom behind me, needing me?  I would be holding back.  I can’t let that happen.”

“It wouldn’t be just you.  If you think I’d let you have the only crack at the Archdemon, you’re mad.”

“But if it comes down to it, in the end – if I lose you, too –”

He doesn’t say anything further.  He doesn’t have to.

She wraps her arm around him.  He’s warm, the rise and fall of his chest real and solid, far realer than a battlefield and an Archdemon and a terrible future.  She kisses him, little kisses against the broad muscles of his back, kisses dotting along the line of his spine.  

“You’re here,” she whispers.  “I’m here.  Maybe that’s enough, tonight.”

A long, shuddering breath.  Then he rolls back to her, pulling her into his arms.  And if he kisses her fierce and raw and hungry, as if the world is ending, she kisses him the same.


End file.
